Review: In 'Maple and Vine' at ACT, playwright Jordan Harrison explores the allure of escaping to a simpler past

Society of Dynamic Obsolescence members Ellen (Julia Coffey, center) and her husband, Dean (Jamison Jones), with new member Katha (Emily Donahoe) in the West Coast premiere of "Maple and Vine" at ACT. Photo by Kevin Berne/ACT.

Two harried New Yorkers trade Twitter for Tupperware parties and lattes for Sanka in the quirky retro fantasy "Maple and Vine."

If you have ever longed for a time when blackberries were just something you ate, when you weren't connected to the office 24/7, when you actually had the time to enjoy life instead of merely summarize it in constant status updates, then you can understand the appeal of living in the low-tech universe of "Maple and Vine."

The escapist concept behind Jordan Harrison's uneven social satire, now in its West Coast premiere at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, hits the spot in our short-attention span world, where technology seems to be reshaping society in its own image. Constant distractions punctuated by the need for instant gratification create a social-media pressure cooker that leads Katha (Emily Donahoe) and Ryu (Nelson Lee) to the edge of a breakdown in their 21st-century lifestyle. They seem far more attached to their laptops than to each other. They race through every day wondering where the time went. They sate their need for leisure online, instead of in reality.

Advertisement

But the playwright doesn't delve deeply enough into the provocative ideas here to ground the pithy anachronistic punch lines in meaningful commentary, and the play's constant shifts in tone undercut its offbeat charms. Mark Rucker's production, while handsomely appointed in white picket fences and 1950s-era finery, lacks the snap needed to keep the comedy aloft. Cumbersome scene changes also hamper the flow in this postmodern fable.

Katha is a woman on the verge. She wakes in the middle of the night tormented by petty work-related anxiety. She writes faux emails in her sleep and dreams of trips to the copier, until madness beckons. Ryu, a cosmetic surgeon, is starting to feel the sting of a job that pays off in money but not fulfillment. He is getting tired of giving 15-year-olds breast implants. The couple also has been traumatized by a recent miscarriage and the fear that happiness may not be as easy to acquire as consumer goods. The only time they feel content is when they are escaping the daily grind.

That makes Katha an easy mark for Dean (a slick turn by Jamison Jones), the square-jawed pitchman for the Society of Dynamic Obsolescence, a community of '50s re-enactors in the Midwest who have decided to chuck "progress" out the window. They have dialed back the clock to the days of Ike, American cars and "Ozzie and Harriet."

This is a world where there is no Google. Sushi is not served in school lunches. The only app is a crab puff.

But there are neighbors who watch your back, pigs in blankets and three-legged races (all without irony). The intimacy of the community promised by the society has undeniable allure.

There's also the comforting notion that no one is expected to do everything. Women tend the home while men work, and downtime is spent with the family, not Facebook friends.

But, as you might suspect, pesky little details like sexism, racism and homophobia soon interfere with this nostalgic suburban bliss.

Harrison, who also wrote the dark fairy tale "Finn in the Underworld," which made its world premiere at Berkeley Rep in 2005, has a doozy of an idea here.

He taps into the tug many people feel of a less complicated way of life.

But he never convinces us that the Society of Dynamic Obsolescence is a viable option for this couple.

Certainly Ryu, who instantly decries the society as a Stepford-style cult, all too quickly seems to find joy in working at a factory and pretending to like practicing karate and cultivating bonsai just to fit in.

For the record, the organization has an authenticity committee, which makes sure that the Pill is outlawed, no one smuggles in Grey Goose vodka and Velcro is verboten. Katha gets so deeply into character that she asks her neighbors to harass her Japanese-American husband just to preserve the sense of realism.

Donahoe gamely tries to find the spunk in Katha's rebirth as a homemaker, but the transformation doesn't seem credible.

In some ways, the real heat here is generated by a subplot, in which Dean indulges his secret longings for Roger (Danny Bernardy), while his trophy wife (the wonderfully wry Julia Coffey) twiddles her thumbs at home.

The playwright hints at insights into the appeal of repression, the psychosexual charge that might tempt gay men into living in a community where they have to hide. But he never fully explores the seductiveness of transgression. Nor does he ever quite articulate what it is Katha is really running from. Her loathing for the quick-fix zeitgeist of the Internet era is certainly compelling to those of us sick of worrying about our Klout score.

But that's not enough to explain her free fall into conformity. In the end, Harrison doesn't do justice to the notion of the past as an oasis.